Seppälä, R., A. Buck, and P. Katila. (editors). 2009.  Adaptation of Forests and People to Climate Change: A Global Assessment Report.  Andreas Fischlin, Peter Glück, John Innes, Bastiaan Louman, Alan Lucier, Balgis Osman-Elasha and John Parrotta (coordinating lead authors); Neil Adger, Matthew P. Ayres, Maria Brockhaus, Carol J. Pierce Colfer, Linda A. Joyce, David Karnosky, Seppo Kellomäki, Aynslie Ogden, Chin Ong, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Jeremy Rayner, Geoff Roberts, Heru Santoso, Brent Sohngen, Ian Thompson and Anita Wreford (lead authors); and Outi Bergäll, Trevor H. Booth, Susan Braatz, Talaat Dafalla, Craig Loehle, Nico Marcar, Johnson Nkem, Kevin Percy, Carmenza Robledo, Bob Scholes, Chris Swanston and Dmitry Zamolodchikov (contributing authors).  International Union of Forest Research Organizations, Helsinki.  IUFRO World Series Volume 22.  224 pp.  Presented to United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) 22 April 2009.
Executive Summary.  Full report.  IUFRO source.  Download individual chapters.  Related Policy Brief. 

Press reports: Nature,  Reuters.com,  ScienceDaily

Key Messages

◆    Climate change over the past half-century has already affected forest ecosystems and will have increasing effects on them in the future. The carbon-regulating services of forests are at risk of being lost entirely unless current carbon emissions are reduced substantially; this would result in the release of huge quantities of carbon to the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change.

◆    Climate change can increase the supply of timber in some regions although there will be considerable temporal variations.

◆    The impacts of climate change on forest goods and services will have far-reaching social and economic consequences for forest-dependent people, particularly the forest dependent poor. Adaptation measures must go beyond single technical solutions and address also the humaninstitutional dimensions of the problem.

◆    Sustainable forest management is essential for reducing the vulnerability of forests to climate change. The current failure to implement it limits the capacity of forests and forest-dependent people to adapt to climate change. To meet the challenges of adaptation, commitment to achieving the goals of sustainable forest management must be strengthened at both the international and national levels.

◆    There is no universally applicable measure for adapting forests to climate change. Forest managers should, therefore, have sufficient flexibility to deploy the adaptation measures most appropriate for their local situations.

◆    Flexible approaches to policy design are needed that are sensitive to context and do not rely on a single, one-size-fits-all mechanism. New modes of governance are required that enable meaningful stakeholder participation and provide secure land tenure and forest user rights and sufficient financial incentives.

◆    More research is required to reduce current uncertainties about the climate-change impacts on forests and people and to improve knowledge about management and policy measures for adaptation. Nevertheless, despite the limitations of current knowledge, climate change is progressing too quickly to postpone adaptation action pending the outcomes of future studies.

◆    Even if adaptation measures are fully implemented, unmitigated climate change would, during the course of the current century, exceed the adaptive capacity of many forests. Large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation are needed to ensure that forests retain their mitigative and adaptive capacities.

Keywords: Adaptive management, Climate change, Ecology, Ecosystem services, Forest disturbance, Forest policy, Governance, pests and pathogens, Sustainable forest management